Live This Sound: The Voyager, by Jenny Lewis.

Every once in a while, a record comes around that consumes you. It fills your waking hours. You think about it during the day, and you play it on constant repeat at night. You want to watch it; to read it; to swallow it whole.  Live this Sound is a regular section of this site that allows you to experience a single album as many ways as you possibly can. This week, we take a look at The Voyager, the new release from ex-Rilo Kiley-ite, Watson-Twinner and former child actress Jenny Lewis.

The Album.

Bottom line: The Voyager isn't only Jenny Lewis' best album (Rilo Kiley work included), it's also one of the strongest releases of the year so far. Fact of the matter is, everything on The Voyager works: from the gorgeous vocals, to the nostalgic (but never overwhelming) string arrangements. It's rare to find an album like this one, crafted by a singer on perfect form, supported by an incredible team of musicians, producers, and very valuable friends.

Musicians of 2014 take note: the bar has just been raised.

How to Eat This Album.

The Voyager is an album of delicious, carefully planned excess, so to properly eat this one you'll need to go for a full three course extravaganza. For your entrée, indulge a in plate of Gougeres (a fancy French way of saying cheese puffs.) They're rich, but not enough to ruin your palate, and they perfectly mirror the exotic yet warmly familiar feel of the album. Recipe here:

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Classic-Cheese-Puffs

For your main, squid ink risotto is the way to go. Like The Voyager, it's at once familiar and strange, walking that delicate balance between good ole stodgy goodness and something a little more risqué.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/black-squid-ink-risotto-with-grilled-prawns-lobster-and-green-onion-vinaigrette-recipe2.html

Who doesn't like cheesecake? That's not even a rhetorical question - who doesn't like cheesecake? It's the only way to round off this album eating experience, and there's a great recipe here:

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/19621/new+york+cheesecake

How to Drink This Album.

The Voyager might be have a surface layer of sweet, but there's a real weight to Lewis' vocals. So, how could you go wrong with a Brandy Alexander, a cocktail that's both creamy and a little rough around the edges?

http://liquor.com/recipes/brandy-alexander/

My advice though: for a great Brandy Alexander, go for higher quality brandy. You'll ruin the whole experience by cheapening the main ingredient, and if that ain't also a life lesson, then I don't know what is.

How to Watch this Album.

The cheap gag here would be to recommend The Wizard, a film shot back in those days when Nintendo ruled the world and Lewis was a child star, but The Voyager's best cinematic equivalent is Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. Like the album, Broken Flowers is almost disarmingly sincere - as funny as some of the scenes with Bill Murray and an oversexed Lolita wannabe named, well, Lolita, might be, there's a real sadness and passion to the movie too. It never goes for the cheap gag in the same way that Lewis never goes for the cheap emotion, and both works end up ultimately being about the same thing: lost love, the passage of time, and that strange, beautiful way we humans just keep on keeping on.

Tilda Swinton doin' her thing in Broken Flowers.

 

A little more obscure but equally good is the French film Girl on the Bridge. Ostensibly a romance (shot in black and white, no less) the movie has some real darkness at its heart too - a suicide attempt is the driving force of the plot. It's mystical, beautiful, and possessing genuine warmth: just like an album I know...

 

 

 

 

How to Read This Album.

 

 

 

This first choice might sound like a bit of a curveball, but Etgar Keret's The Nimrod Flipout contains the same biting, barely repressed passion as The Voyager. A collection of funny-sad short stories, this is Keret's best work: it's punchy, often laugh out loud hilarious, and powerful. In short, it's the kind of book you can finish in one sitting, and then immediately pick back up and jump into all over again.

 

 

 

Just as worth a read is Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice. Pynchon might just be my favourite author of all time - I don't think he's ever written a bad book, or even a bum line - and of all his work, Inherent Vice is the one with a tone closest to The Voyager's sense of wonder and pain. Pynchon has a reputation for being difficult, but this is one of his easiest reads: grab yourself a copy and lap up every word like the nectar that it is.

 





Live this Sound: L'Amour, by Lewis.

Every once in a while, a record comes around that consumes you. It fills your waking hours. You think about it during the day, and you play it on constant repeat at night. You want to watch it; to read it; to swallow it whole.  Live this Sound is a regular section of this site that allows you to experience a single album as many ways as you possibly can. This week, we take a look at L'Amour, a lost album originally released by Lewis in 1983, that disappeared from the public eye until it was recently re-released to critical acclaim.

The Album.

 

 

 

Randall A. Wulff isn't the most romantic sounding name anyone has been slapped with, so perhaps it's no surprise that when the Canadian singer-songwriter released an album in 1983 he did so under the moniker Lewis. The album, L'Amour received almost no critical attention, and slipped into that dark realm of obscurity that all musicians fear, going ignored for almost 31 years until a collector snagged a copy in a flea market.

 

Finally, more than three decades after its release, the album is currently enjoying the success it should have always been accorded, with a beautiful re-issue released by those grand guys at Light in the Attic records.

 

 

Bottom line: we should all be thankful that Lewis' story has finally been given its well-deserved happy ending, because L'Amour is a beautiful album. It has a soft, considered quality that never becomes trite or melodramatic. As silly as that cover art might look, this is an album that breaks free of the constraints of its time - the 80's synths in this record never date the sound, or make it laughable. It's a timeless record in the truest sense of the word - powerful, understated and genuinely heartfelt. 

 

 

 

How to Eat This Album.

 

 

 L'Amour is an unashamedly romantic album - the songs contained inside wear their beating hearts proudly on their sleeves. This record has been carefully constructed to be played as you and your beloved dance a slow waltz, or sit down to a romantic dinner. As a result, the best way to eat this album is with somebody you care about, preferably over candles and a light fish dish. And, for that purpose, you can't beat a well cooked baked salmon, preferably served with asparagus and lemon drizzle. As always, taste.com.au knows where its at. Check out their recipe here:

 

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/1469/baked+salmon

 

 

 

And, what's a romantic dinner without a tastefully prepared dessert? If you've got the required cooking skills (and make no mistake, this is a pretty tricky one to get right) then you can't go wrong with a Dobos Torte. The multi-layered cake not only looks impressive, it also has the right air of mystery and exotic flavour to perfectly suit a record that is surrounded in as much mystique as a stranger on a dark night. Here's a recipe for ya:

 

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Dobos-Torte/Detail.aspx?evt19=1

 

How to Drink this Album.

 

 

 

L'Amour isn't a cocktail album: for all of its bells and whistles, this record works best because of its simplicity. As a result, with this one, go with a good trusted white wine. As silly as the bottle (and name) might appear, Arrogant Frog is actually a beautifully restrained white. It doesn't try to overload you with flavours - it's a very drinkable, very understated wine. Like Lewis, it gets to the point, and simply works (and it won't beak your bank balance, either.)

 

 

How to Watch This Album.

 

With an album like this, you need a good old fashioned romance: my personal pick then would be the heart-meltingly simple L'Atalante. The film, written and directed by Jean Vigo, was released in 1934, and since then has repeatedly been referred to as one of the greatest films of all time. It's a black and white tale of a sailor and his wife and the love that keeps them together, even when they occasionally fall apart. It's one of the most down to earth films of the era - there's not half as much melodrama in here as there were films of the time. It's just an expertly told love story, as refreshing as it is loveable.

 

 

 L'Atalante's celebrated underwater dance scene.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While we're on the French film route, you can't beat Stolen Kisses, Francois Truffaut's 1968 sequel to his film The 400 Blows. Whereas The 400 Blows was a film with a rebellious heart, Stolen Kisses see its protagonist and director soften a little. There's still a lot of passion to the film, but it's ultimately a sweetly simple romance that allows its hero Antoine Doinel to love and be loved, in the most satisfactory of ways.

 

 

How to Read This Album.

 

Poetry of the heart is the way to go with this one: nothing beats reading the work of Rainer Maria Rilke while settling back to Lewis' masterful record. My personal favourite Rilke has to be "Again and Again, However We Know the Landscape of Love." Read it here:

 

http://42opus.com/v8n4/againandagain

Review: Manilow by Smudge.

Alternative rock has gotten pretty snobby these days. Every other record put out is a concept album, most of them centring around the ground-breaking ideas that Wars Are Bad, and Folks Get Sad and Kill Themselves Sometimes. Musicians and listeners alike seem almost embarrassed by the idea that rock and roll used to be, y'know, fun.

Thank fuck for Smudge then, and their album Manilow, which is about to celebrate its twentieth birthday. The album is effortless - it works naturally, and without pretension. None of the songs are about World Peace or the politics of the Middle East. There's no deep hidden meaning here (unless you're the kind of person who can read an essay out of the line "well it's not much like a lounge.")

 

Impractical Joke

 

Smudge takes the feelings, characters, and locations that other bands might pretentiously dismiss as 'ordinary' and crafts something important out of them. Just take "Divan" or "Ugly Just Like Me" - songs that are as far removed from the artificial 'poetic' world of singers like Leonard Cohen as you can imagine. There's nothing cold, or considered about those two ballads, and that's what makes them immediately so goddamn likeable. These aren't songs that are meant to make you sit around and ponder - their songs that give a sudden, unavoidable jolt of emotion to your system.

Superhero

 



Smudge are a band of contradictions - they're funny, but they can be kinda sad too. Their songs seems totally effortless, but in a way that makes you realise how much thought and passion has been put into making it feel that way. There's enough space on their records to let you relax, but they're tight too - not a single song drags or hesitates for a second.

 

Divan - Tom Morgan says you can crash out on his divan.

 

It's the kind of music that invites you in, rather than snobbily trying to make you work at liking it. It's the warm, open tunes of a band who want to make you feel as good listening to their music as they feel playing it. And it fucking rocks.

 

Get the album on vinyl here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/smudge-manilow-20th-anniversary-vinyl-reissue. Or don't. Smudge'll probably still like you anyway.

World Peace is None of Your Business: Review.

World Peace is None of Your Business is the ultimate Morrissey album, and by that I don't mean it's his best. I mean it's the one release that manages to sum up what is both fantastic and hair-tearingly frustrating about the man.

Full disclosure: I'm a Morrissey fan, and have been since those high school years when I thought I was the only person in history who didn't fit in, and spent my evenings pouting in the dark while listening to "This Charming Man."  I buy every thing he puts out, from the great (You Are The Quarry) to the embarrassing (that God-awful Satellite of Love cover), and although I can see how people have  become tired of Mozza's semi-political, semi-comic, semi-serious narcissism, I can't stop myself from coming back to him.

World Peace Is None of Your Business kicks off with the titular track. Musically, it's as good as anything he's ever done - it has a lavish, oversaturated kind of feel; all sparkly reverb and shoegazey keyboards. This is the good stuff I was talking about earlier. The bad  comes in the form of the horrific lyrics. "Police will stun you with their stun guns," Morrissey croons, a line so bad not even his distinctive voice can save it from making you laugh out loud. "Or," he helpfully adds, "they'll disable you with tasers/That's what governments are for."

Hey, remember when Morrissey was subtle? No. Me neither.

 

"World Peace is None of Your Business." What will police do with their stun guns again? 

The album's standout track is the second, "Neal Cassady Drops Dead." It follows a tried and true Morrissey lyric formula -  extended tongue in cheek references to classic writers - but it also manages to inject some fun into the proceedings. Well, Morrissey's kind of fun, anyway, particularly the verse that goes:

Everyone has babies
Babies full of rabies
Rabies full of scabies
Scarlet has a fever...

The little fella has got rubella.

"Neil Cassady Drops Dead" Babies full of rabies!

 

The album's most 'classic' Morrissey tune is Istanbul - it's also one of the worst. It feels more like a parody of the man than the man himself: it's all the warbly choruses and depressing imagery we've heard before, but there's no passion in it this time. Thank God then for "The Bullfighter Dies", a song exciting enough to kickstart the album and carry us (almost) all the way to the disappointing climax of "Oboe Concerto" a song as dull and pretentious as its title.

 

The real joy of this album however, has to be the second disc that comes with the bonus edition. It contains six songs that, for God knows what reason, never made it onto the album, which is a real shame, because these six tracks are some of the best that Morrissey has ever recorded. "Scandanavia" is a rousing piece of fun; a perfect chorus overlaid on top of a perfect beat. Even "One of Our Own" the weakest song on this second disc, is still definitely worth a listen.

 

So, another few years go by, another Morrissey album is released - and once again, it's equal parts genius and equal parts insufferable. But, maybe that's just the way things will have to be. After all, isn't that like life - moments of beauty nestling amongst shards of horror and pain? Or maybe I've been listening to this record for too long and now I'm starting to write like discount Morrissey. Christ. For all of the good in World Peace is None of Your Business listening to it does make you feel like a bit of a douchebag.